Piety
by Arbutus
Summary: Mokou's thoughts on immortality in the context of her ancient feud. Not really a TeruMoko but it's possible that you'll catch a glimpse if you want it enough.


_The Touhou franchise is owned by Team Shanghai Alice and ZUN, to whom I give all credit for the creation of these characters and their fictional universe. In particular, the epigraph has been quoted verbatim from ZUN's work,_ Cage In Lunatic Runagate.

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**Piety**

_The reason I was no longer afraid of the boredom of immortal life was because she was here!_

_The terror of immortality is eternal solitude. An endless reality tormented by consciousness of one's sins._

_The only one who could sympathize with that was my old immortal enemy._

It's easy for them, maybe, to conceive of the basis for our behavior. For someone else to look in on us and see and think and say why it must be that we do what we do. But they can only come close to our world, never all the way in, because they can't know. We don't let anyone know really, not even ourselves.

There is no way to show them what it means for something that holds all the meaning in the world to suddenly become meaningless. Beings with and without age, even ones who will live for millennia before their days end, will never know how it feels when not even a fraction of your total lifespan can ever be set behind you. Only we know, and I know that she knows too because it's too obvious to even need saying.

When we tangle together in our lethal liaisons, onlookers commit the greatest fallacy that we could imagine when they ask "Why?"

"Why do it? Why, over such a small thing, over a trifle when you'll live for so long?"

Every story seems to say that no feud has ever been brought to peace without bloodshed, and neither of us can shed the blood of the other. So to these onlookers, whether our close friends (who are frequently well-acquainted with each other, it seems) or foreigners, we can see why "Why?" Is the question they might ask. But they don't know, haven't found out, that as an immortal the question isn't always "Why?", but sometimes "Why not?"

This is why their speculation will never bear fruit, never even blossom.

They think that when to die at all means nothing, death by the hands of another must mean nothing as well. If this were the case then "Why not?" Would still be a satisfactory answer for us, I believe, but dying still _does_ have meaning for us. Death for mortals has meaning, and mortals spend their lives trying to find it. We have found the same to be true. For us, it is that we can no longer associate anything _with_ death. Death is the fount of all sorrow, and relief, for mortals, but we must find these things with the absence of death looming over us.

It's hard for me to think of the exact moment, if there is one, the exact time when I stopped killing her for my family's sake and kept doing so for mine. When something about my outlook on our circumstances changed.

When I first found her again I was too filled with surprise and rage, and our banter served to propagate that equilibrium for years, but now...

Now when I kill her it's the most meaningful thing I do, and I know she feels this way too. I know because of the look in her eyes when she gets the upper hand, when there's a clear shot or an opening for her arm to get in and grasp my neck, too tired and rabid to use magic. It's the same as the one I wear when I'm about to win. When we're with each other we're different people, we _have_ to be, we need somewhere to go with this thing that no one else can help us deal with.

We're like pagans praying to the sun when it sets in the evening in the hopes that it might see fit to rise again in the morning. It is almost a certainty, and we know it means little to fate to tempt it like this, but just when I've almost killed her my heart beats as fast as it ever does. The mad grin on my face and the look in my eyes would be enough to scare almost anyone who knows me, everyone but her. Only she knows the look, and I know it because I've seen it on her face as often as it's been on mine. The gaze of a maddened, irrational pilgrim petitioning the sun to rise again so she might not be left in total darkness, condemned to the void. And we don't fear it at all when we play the sacrifice for each other.

We kill each other casually when we must, when others are around. In social situations we maintain a facade of indifference. So that we appear normal, we don't let it out. But alone, with each other, there's no need to hide it. It's like an addiction. When we're alone we waste no time in getting right to our rituals. I am overwhelmed by excitement and her own elation is palpable, it's impossible not to smile and laugh as we set about our observance with furious devotion, setting free the parts of our minds that have realized how long we really must live. Only those parts of us can truly smile or laugh in sardonic appreciation for our plight as our hands tighten around the neck of our only chain to our bizarre reality. We each need to feel fingers clamped in futility around our own, and the whole length of our bodies jerking, one in uncontrollable euphoria, the other in desperation.

Every time she stops thrashing and breathing and goes limp in my hands I roll off and wait. These are the only real nights in my life, the darkest moments since I found her again: before my little dawn, waiting for my sun to rise. These long few moments, long even to an immortal, and we draw them out by letting ourselves out over the edge of the abyss just a little. We think _maybe she won't move,_ and convince ourselves before the adrenaline and insanity abates that it is certain: _she's dead and I'm alone, again, forever._ And then when the sun _does_ rise time stops, for an immortal time _stops_, and the feeling cannot be explained by anything but divinity. We must be the most pious people in the world: our religion conflicts with no other, and will surely outlast them all.

To outsiders it's our feud that makes us continue, to us it's what _lets _us continue. We must say its name so that our real, monolithic, insatiable problem can remain nameless. It fills the gap between us because we can't let that gap be filled by our immortality: to make the true object of our devotion our cause for it would be heresy. That we can practice in secret and in the open simultaneously is one of the greatest gifts I have been given since drinking the elixir, second only to our reunion. That the very grievance which has plagued my mind since she came into my life and cursed me with immortality would reunite us and become our salvation is purely poetic. But we can never say so, not even to each other.

If we did that we could never live amongst them. It would shatter our grasp on the present, on what is important to the people of this realm, on what it is that makes us welcome. What we find as meaningful here would suddenly lose all purpose, and we would be lost.

It is no coincidence that I was lost until I found her again, and when I did find her my despair ended.

Since finding this place I have never been jerked awake by fear in my sleep, or felt the cold tendrils of loneliness encapsulate me. I smile at the sky and the trees and the rabbits, I can feel the world again with my senses when before I had forgotten them. I enjoy eating and the taste of food, of cold water in the summer and sunlight on my face, and the smell of smoke and the heat of fire. I can empathize with every living thing even though I do not share their most important trait: inconstancy.

I kept myself from fully realizing for a long time that since the day I found her again I have never regretted being alive. Not once.

Religions change, slowly. Ours might too. Maybe one day we will find a new way to practice, to keep our minds in this world, and fire will no longer be my instrument of devotion. Some way that will always affirm that we will never be permanently lonely, and that even fleeting meaning is worth the effort. She knows it too, that one day we might change. It's so obvious that we don't even need to say it. Onlookers will always question us and say "What a waste," but we know what we're doing. We have to perform this task delicately, for our own sakes. Our entire future rests on the edge of a knife and our critics can see only a little ways ahead. We can't let it fall. And besides, there's no reason to worry.

After all, we're in this forever. There's no rush. And really, there's no choice.

Not that I'd want one.

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_I've never written something start to finish in one go before, so that was a little weird for me. Literally had the idea for this at 10:15 and it's now 11:10. I still don't think I've realized that I actually did this so that's probably why this feels unfinished to me, but I couldn't convince myself that it wasn't worth writing. Weird too, since this isn't really exactly how I see Mokou and Kaguya. There's been an idea bouncing around in my head with them for a while and this isn't it, but I needed something to tide me over until more important things settle down. Also, I needed to get this out of my system before I could tackle the other thing, which I don't want to come out too serious. _

_Anyways, I hope you liked my take on Mokou and her take on being immortal with the Princess. I feel like it could be read as Kaguya's take on Mokou as well without many changes, but it started as Mokou so it gets her name on it. I feel kind of like this could be a soliloquy in a longer work if it were modified a bit, as it stands I'll leave the circumstances that brought about her introspection to the reader's imagination. Either way, it was on a whim, so I'm inclined to think of it more as an exercise than anything else. __Doesn't feel like it was very good, but that's how it came out. _

_I checked it over, but if you see any mistakes please assume that they are deliberate and symbolic and that you just don't have the literary mind to understand them. Actually don't do that though, or I won't learn. Please review if you have anything to say. I will mention that I did deliberately let her slip between the singular and plural first person in what I thought was not the most natural of ways, so I'm sorry if that got to you. _

_I have no illusions about my abilities so this seems unlikely, but if this brought anyone even a sliver of satisfaction I'd be very happy. _


End file.
